I'm leaving for a couple weeks to go visit family back in Italy. Just wondering if there's anything special I should do to prepare my tanks? I have a friend who will be coming by every couple days to feed the cats and fish. I've shown him how I hand feed the scarlet badis, although honestly I think they'd probably get by on shrimplets.

I'm not going to ask him to do water changes though. The fish should be fine for 17 days right?

Both tanks are planted, the 25 is definitely understocked. I'm more concerned about the 10 with nine pretty large female endler guppies and two Badis badis.

I just rinsed out the filter media and did a water change on the 25, tomorrow Ill change out most of the water in the 10.

Always remember not to rinse all of your media, that's where all the good bacteria is, but I'm sure you know that. I think that's just fine. Fish can go days without eating so every other day is a ok for a couple weeks. Also don't fret the water change, they'll be fine . Happy travels!

I'm thinking that they will be fine. Once we were at my parents for 14 days and the fish fasted for 5 of those days, and were fed every other day - wc before we left, another as soon as we got back, all was fine.

Your tanks should be fine for that time frame. Just make sure they don't over feed your fish. As Biulu suggested, if you had some way of measuring the food for each feeding. I deal with large fish and large food so I measure out ziplock bags for each feeding and put a box of the bags next to each tank.

I go to the Dollar store and get the snack size ziplock baggies. I pre-measure the amount of food for each tank. I actually tape the baggie to the tank. For 17 days, every second day feeding, that is about 8 baggies.

I leave my Endlers in the office without food over the long weekends. This last weekend they were quite fine for four days.

I have timers on all of my tanks (about $6 each at the hardware store and the dollar store has then but I don't but these) so the lighting is not a problem with the autotimers. No need for heaters, so avoid the potential for a heater failure by pulling them off line until you come back.

The only other point is using a net in the unfortunate event that a fish dies. You'll want to get it out quickly so have a net ready for the fish sitter to use.

He's got a saltwater tank so hopefully he knows what he's doing food-wise. I already have the timers since I'm not good at remembering to turn the lights on and off at the right times, and I took the heater out a while ago when the nice weather started.

By the way they don't have the internet in Italy? You couldn't pop on and say hello from over there? Not that I'm jealous or anything that you got to go to somewhere that I have never been and would love to go.